Sunday, April 20, 2008

Passover seder

Pesach (Passover) is the holiday when families sit together at their table and before, during, and after the meal read the Hagaddah, the book of the "telling" of our deliverance from slavery in Egypt.My kids and grandsons are scattered around the world in the Diaspora. So a kind old friend brought me to his family's seder in Jerusalem. The wife's side is of Turkish origin. It was a first for me to hear their melodies for the Hebrew and Aramaic songs in the Hagaddah, some quite different from the Ashkenazi tradition. Some they even sang in Ladino, which is a nearly extinct Romance language, descended from medieval Spanish, spoken by Sephardic Jews especially in the Balkans, Turkey, and the Near East, also called Judeo-Spanish. Beautiful!.Here you see the famous matza ball soup. These matza balls were so fluffy, like clouds floating in the chicken soup. If made with a heavy hand, knaidlach sink like cannonballs (both in the soup and in your stomach)..Dear friends, I am leaving at dawn tomorrow for five days of a special adventure down in the Negev desert. Please come back on Saturday for, God willing, exciting photos and stories. See you then. Shalom shalom!

10 comments:

What a lovely tradition. It would be soothing to hear the songs that tell such wonderful stories.The Matza Ball soup looks great.Have a wonderful trip to the Negev desert and I can't wait to see the pictures. Take care.